today is homemade day

Made homemade mayo and watched it break twice before I said screw it and just added another egg. Reaffirmed the fact that I don't like mayo much unless it's already in a salad. Scared to try the chicken salad I made. I might make the rest of the mayo into a cilantro lemon number to go on... something.

I also made fresh whole milk ricotta using this recipe.
It's draining now.

Why haven't I eaten? Here's a draining picture.



more to come when it's done!

Yes, it's that yellow.

cooking slow by necessity and Dreamfields pasta

Now I love pasta. I adore it, but sometimes the carbs don't love me so much. When that happens I go and get a box of Dreamfields (WHY DON'T YOU MAKE ANGEL HAIR OR SMALLER SPAGHETTI?!)



...ahem anyway. It tastes like pasta because it is pasta, but they've done something special to the carbs to block them from being absorbed. Apparently this doesn't hold true upon vigorous reheating or possibly cooking in tomato sauce (but then why the lasagna? I'm going to mark this as a pasturban legend).


So last night I got home quite late and didn't have much time to cook since I had to raid in WoW (my second job, sometimes)

Here's what I did.

• The water I had boiling i set to very low so it was barely simmering.
• I'd cooked a few pieces of bacon and ate them while I put a sliced vidalia onion in their oil, added a little butter and put it on almost-off-low.
• When we wiped on XT hard mode I'd go and check on the onions and eventually added some garlic to them. I also added cayenne, oregano, basil, black peper and thyme
• Back to raiding...
• Smelled the garlic and added sliced crimini mushrooms to the pan
• Raid
• I let that go till the mushrooms were quite done and just turned the whole thing off.
• When we were done raiding (after 1am, we started at 9pm) I put the water back on high.
• I added sliced chicken breast to the pan and the juice of one lemon
• Cooked it till it was done and ooh.. remember not to overcook the Dreamfields pasta because it turns to mush. The spaghetti takes 9 mins!

I took a little bit and put it in a bowl and saved the rest for lunch today.

I also added ample amounts of parmesan.


Here's the recipe condensed:

1 chicken breast sliced
1 medium vidalia onion sliced thinly into half moons
8-10 crimini mushrooms
8 cloves garlic (I do love this, use it to your taste)
3 slices of bacon
butter, olive oil
spices like oregano, thyme, basil, black pepper and cayenne
a dash of soy sauce
the juice of one lemon
pasta to serve it over
Parmesan

cook bacon in large skillet and reserve (or eat!). Place onions into bacon grease and set the eye to low. Add a pat of butter. Cook until the onions are soft and near caramelized. Add minced garlic and cook until golden. Add mushrooms and spices. Add butter or olive oil if needed.

When the mushrooms are close to done add the chicken, soy and lemon juice. Cook until just done and still tender.

Serve over pasta with ample amounts of Parmesan!
This is what it looked like before I mixed (and devoured):


Best part about the Dreamfields pasta? One serving has 5 "digestable" carbs.

this little piggy was spotted

I had all week to decide where I wanted to go for my birthday on the 2nd and it took me till 3pm to go "hey, let's do the Spotted Pig."

I'd wanted to go for ages and this desire was re-sparked when I read a mention of their gnudi in a fluff magazine article about Mandy Moore in NYmag.

The avid yelper/researcher that I am, I'd read that in order to get a seat you had to arrive around 5:30. So we did..

We were seated in a cozy little nook on the second floor that overlooked some lucky person's lush backyard.

To start I had a mojito (of course). Mike (the indulgent boyfriend) started off with a speckled hen.

I went down the list and picked what I'd wanted beside the gnudi.

I got the chicken liver toasts, gnudi and the crispy pig's ear.

Mike got the burger and a side of sugar snap peas with black mint (this mint didn't look black, idk)


Anyhoo onto the food.

The chicken liver toasts came first and the bread was dripping with luscious olive oil. A huge mound of chopped chicken liver was on each piece. I mmed at the first bite and made him try some which he wasn't too pleased about.

Next up were the gnudi...

Oh gnudi...

Lovely gnudi...

If I could go here every day I would get these each time and swoon anew.

They were perfectly tender pockets of seasoned ricotta served in a decadent butter sauce with fried sage and a little red drizzle as garnish.

Words probably cannot describe how delicious these were.

I've been telling everyone I know about them. That's about as close as I can get.

I scoured the web looking for a recipe for them and came up with a Gothamist post that I will try, but I still want to know what they put in the sauce. If Mandy Moore can learn the recipe for these little pillows of deliciousness, surely a dedicated foodie should be allowed the honor?


I chose to have the pig ear arrive alongside Mike's burger.

It was served with a yummy little salad with lots of lemon segments that balanced the fatty, chewy piece quite well.

I made Mike try this and he complained it stuck in his teeth to which I replied "eat something else and it'll come out."

It did.

As you can see I barely remembered to snap a picture of this (and this will be a trend for some of the next photos of the night).

Here are Mike's burger and shoestring fries.

I got to taste both.

The burger was moist and covered with just enough roquefort to add great flavor.

The fries were awesome. They have little slivers of fried garlic and rosemary mixed in. I nabbed about 65% of the garlic from his plate.

Even though I'd managed to upend half of the peas onto the couch we were sitting on (I'm sorry!) the bits we got to eat were quite delicious.


For dessert I'd asked our server (who was also awesome, by the way, but I forgot her name. She had longish brownish hair. I realize how descriptive that was. :P).. ahem I asked our server if they did birthday candles since Mike wanted to make sure I got one. They did.

I chose the banoffee pie which is basically layers of banana, soft toffee and whipped cream with a tiiiiiiny bit of tart crust at the end.

I was almost done when I remembered to take a picture so I stuck the candle back in and here it is.

Mike had the chocolate, walnut amaretto cake. It came with a dollop of sour cream (which he hates) that went well with my banoffee pie.

This is what was left by the time I remembered to take pictures of the desserts.

We will definitely be back. In fact, this is the first restaurant (that's not a pizza place) that Mike has said this about without prompting or urging by yours truly.

Spotted Pig, I salute thee... now give up the gnudi.

Bar Bao: best hash? HA!

Since this was just taken yesterday I've finally caught up! Woo.

NYmag's the best of NY came out recently and they said the "BEST" hash was at barbao... I really beg to differ.

I love daikon.. and the little bits of cake that were diced beneath the pork belly were delish. The hash was too sweet, too salty and too... meh.

I ordered the daikon rice cake (hash) which has duck confit, an hour poached egg, duck bacon and sweet soy.
I also got an order of the pork belly and didn't see a bit of red cabbage anywhere (but it was deliciously fatty)
I got the raved about duck fried rice and that was mmmm.

The pictures show all three piled onto my plate since it was my first meal of the day. I had the leftovers for brunch this morning. The first picture has mostly fried rice and pork belly and the second has pork belly and hash.

As I left I saw the cards for the place and remembered that I'd also seen them when I was at Baoguette (which disappoined me in bahn mi land tremendously). /sigh



Bar Bao
100 W 82nd St
New York, NY 10079
(212) 501-0776

slow roasted chicken and polenta

I set the oven to 250 degrees and squeezed the juice of one lemon over the chicken.

I was in a rush because my butter was frozen so I melted it in a pan, let that cool then covered the chicken with it in my cocotte. I used adobo seasoning (from Penzey's), ancho chili pepper and this bicentennial seasoning (also from Penzey's). I cooked the bird for 4-5 hours and towards the end covered the skin with honey.

The polenta is the same recipe from earlier.

Here's the bird (that I didn't tie up) looking a bit of a slore in the pot: